As soon as the Amsterdam turned into the shelter
of the islands around Anchorage, all the violent motions of the ship ceased and
we sailed smoothly into port. This morning, we took the shuttle into the city
proper. Since it is Labor Day in the U.S., there was not much traffic. The bus
driver told us a little about Anchorage. We crossed a small river where men
were fishing for salmon. The driver said Beluga whales sometimes chase the
salmon part way into the mouth of the river.
The ship had docked and started off-loading passengers
at 8 a.m. We waited for an hour so we would not be in the way. There is an extreme
differential for the tides in Alaska. When I looked over the rail at 8:00, the
off ramp looked almost flat. When we showed up to leave at 9:00, they shut the
door and said they were moving the ramp up to the third floor because the tide
had risen. So, we went up there to wait.
After we got off, we had to wait for a bus that
was equipped to handle us. We were manually hoisted on and off of the shuttle bus
which took about twenty minutes. There was a 15 minute drive each way into town.
We got a map and made our way to the Anchorage Museum. Out of a four hour
visit, we were actually only in the museum for an hour. We didn’t have time to
see much of anything. We left the harbor at 9:30 and came back on board at
1:30. We needed to get back to the ship so Bill could have the low sodium
lunch.
We had a new waiter today. He had an unusual name.
He said his father gave him a Japanese name hoping that he would one day be
admitted to a Japanese university. That didn’t work out for him so he is
working for Holland America. We tried to encourage him with our stories of graduating
college when we were older.
